Update:On top of all the additional miniatures below some more concept art has popped up for the Naiads, Forces of Nature and the deadly fire breathing Salamanders!

First up are said Naiads that the team are looking for your input on. There are two other designs for them that they’d like you to vote on as backers and then they’ll go ahead with the most popular option. It’s great to see that we’re getting some more alternative and strange races popping up in Mantica.

Additionally the community also voted on the addition of a Druid to the Forces of Nature and this is the style that was picked. They’ve gone for a more ‘wild woman’ style approach that combines a few different influences from our own world.

Last but not least is the Salamander race that you’ve seen in the Dungeon Saga Kickstarter that blew up earlier this year. I love the idea of bipedal dragon types and it’s nice to see Mantic’s take on them getting to the tabletop for Kings of War. It does also help that i reckon this is going to be a dream to paint.

We’ll kick things off with a look at some of the add-ons both funded and coming soon to the big armies you’ll be making for that world spanning campaign Mantic have in the works. The Orcs are now banging their wardrums while the Ogres have unlocked the secrets of the arcane and unleashed their berserkers on the battlefield too.

I really want to see what the Berserkers look like in finished miniature form and would hope to have them more animated with axes swinging around as they charge into battle.

The Abyssal Dwarfs are not to be left out however when it comes to spellcasters and beasts of war. The Supreme Ironcaster is looking rather awesome and I think his mount will be cool too. I like that they’ve taken this modular approach with the Dragon kit allowing you to change the dead to make it into a different beast.

“Cast to the deepest pit of the Abyss, his soul trapped and bound in the very Tome of Valandor itself, Ba’el has now returned to take his revenge. Half mad with rage and spite, his physical frame racked by the changes wrought upon it by the weird powers of the Abyss, Ba’el has only one focus – the destruction of his ‘brother’ Valandor, and his ascension to true Godhood.”

“A legendary hero from the time before the Great Flood, Valandor’s true nature was revealed when he returned to battle the creatures of the Abyss once again. Now he faces a terrible choice – destroy one half of his immortal being, or watch the world of mortals burn to ashes.”

Talking of legendary heroes and cool miniatures we definitely want to see the mighty Valandor and Demonlord Ba’el are also on the cards and I think both of these guys would be utterly sublime to see finished and painted up. I love the broken look to Ba’el showing that while he’s a Demonlord he probably schemes and plots behind the scenes more than fighting in up close and personal combat.

Valandor is just a tank of a miniature and reminds me of some of the Angels from Diablo. Can’t go wrong with a mighty pair of shoulder pads and an epic cloak. I do like cloaks.

Mantic have also teamed up with not only 4Ground but also Secret Weapon to bring you some terrain to play your games on as well. There’s no point having all these armies and then nothing to fight over! Above you can see some of the terrain sets you can get from them alongside the tiles that make up a glorious 6×4 table.

With a new rulebook, the chance to grab entire armies and even terrain part of the add-on package are you tempted to start Kings of War?

It depends where in the world you are. Being in the UK I could never get a set of the Secret Weapon terrain for $200, factoring in postage and import tax. If I got a set through the Mantic kickstarter it would cost a flat $250.

Wow, turning out to be a lovely new load-out of models haha. The terrain pieces look amazing! Oooh, Ogre Berserker Braves… looks like @warzan will be getting his “Old Geezer” Ogres ready for their Bucket List Crusade at last.

I agree. And it certainly makes me more sympathetic towards Mantic when they get something (in my opinion) wrong. Whether that be models that are not as good as expected, or something else, I feel that their hearts are in the right place and that they’re trying to run a business in an ethical way without screwing over others in the industry – or pretending they don’t exist.

Few hours to go and not sure. I am very, very worried that the artwork will translate into cartoonish looking models. Mantic’s “cartoon” days with their dwarfs and somewhat their elves were a low point in their history. I am fearful we’re gonna be seeing this return.

Shame there was so much metal stuff in the stretch goals. I’d have rather they’d have funded half as much and had 10 or so hard plastic sprues produced, instead of 4 plastic and 15-20 metal figs (many of them duplicates of things they already have).

Initially added onto a pledge for an Elf mage until I found it was metal and then added nothing more the rest of the campaign. I shall likely turn the extra 8 quid pledged into something dull like movement trays now.

They did say on the final day that they’d make a final decision on material when they know how many of each thing they’ve sold, so some may end up being restic yet (that’s going to upset people who genuinely like metal figs…). I for one am not going to order a metal figure and hope it turns into something more chip resistant however.

Unfortunately development and tooling costs for hard plastic sprues isn’t cheap, from what I’ve heard over the years, and just means more money that needs to be made before a profit is returned.

The Kickstarter costs (KS fee, card processing, and VAT) would take about $36,000 off the total, and when the freebies/production costs/’free’ postage are factored in I would doubt that they could have funded too many hard plastic kits.

I would love to know the actual costs involved in producing a hard plastic sprue. @warren know perhaps?

Dreamforge Games financed sprues for two separate Titans, including dozens of weapons, sprues for smaller versions of said Titans, again with weapons, another huge APC vehicle, as well as some 30 separate sprues for a variety of infantry and accessories with a Kickstarter that only made half as much money.

I love the rules of the game but the art design of the miniatures, imo, is just god awful. The Ogres, Goblins and Undead look good, the Orcs and Dark Elves are passable, but the rest? No. We tend to substitute all kinds of other minis into the game, which is a shame because one of my favorite parts of miniature wargaming is the miniatures themselves. And I would love to support this game in that way, especially since the cost of the minis is pretty good.